The Virgin Spring

1969 feel-good movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Based on a Swedish folktale and set during medieval times, this is the story of a family who sends the daughter and a surly maid to light some candles only to have the daughter raped and murdered by forest thugs. Soon afterward, her parents meet their daughter's attackers face to face and have a decision to make.

According to a guy named Daniel Ekeroth who wrote a book called A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema, John Waters says this is the first movie to show a character vomiting. He'd probably know! You almost have to give the movie a bonus point for that, right? This movie had me at the surly maid with her break frog surprises and the way she plucks chicken feathers. It's really kind of hot. This movie does such a good job at creating tension. Bergman shows us a smoke hole, a leather satchel, a butcher knife lodged in a tabletop, trees--nothing anybody would notice or think twice about--with this focus that makes them seem the like the most ominous things a person can be shown. There's such a sadness and a beauty to many of these shots--tree dust like falling snow as the boy contemplates the crime and vomits up break, the poetic wrestling match between a man and a tree. Bergman's imagery always seems to be simple but profound, and the stuff in this is no exception. Then of course you've got a pair of scenes of violence, shocking not because there's anything flashily gruesome about them but because they're just so realistic, so blunt. Almost thankfully, there's some oddness in this that gives this that folk tale feel to remind you that you're just watching a movie. Rapists with jaw harps, another sans tongue, a one-eyed guy who likes to show off his collection of severed fingers. Also, this has the absolute worst bedtime story teller in the history of bedtime stories. There were two other things I really liked about this one. First, I like the furniture in medieval Sweden, all the those clunky doors, the one-eyed guy's "seat of honor," bulky tables. And also, this might have some of the best dialogue I've read in a movie in a long time, a scene involving a gift of clothing that is filled with such juicy double meanings that I just had to watch it again. This isn't exactly easy viewing, but there's a quiet beauty and reflective tone that makes it pretty brilliant.